What Avedon said:

Bearing in mind that in the time I've lived here [in the UK] the value of the dollar to the pound has ranged between about $1.55=£1.00 to $2.00=£1.00, £30K a year is a pretty comfortable salary here. One of the things that makes it so comfortable is that you already have, regardless of who you work for or if you even have a regular job, a completely portable deluxe healthcare plan that doesn't cost you any extra money when you see your doctor or go to a specialist or get tests or have surgery or endure a hospital stay. You have pretty much full coverage (excepting your glasses and dentistry) for free delivery of healthcare at the point of use, with no argument from some insurance industry hack. If your doctor thinks you need an operation, there's no arguing with insurance agents about it - your doc just refers you to the hospital specialists, you see them, they do what's necessary, and no one sends you a bill. No paperwork, no desperate phone calls, no deciding you can't afford vital treatment.

And why shouldn't Americans have that kind of care, too? After all, you're already paying for it - in taxes. Every time you pay taxes, regardless of your own healthcare plan, you also pay for someone else's healthcare - Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, NIH, SCHIP, whatever - you're paying for government health services and research (which, by the way, is also a subsidy to the commercial medical industry that makes use of the research and development at bargain rates) - only you're paying for a lot of it more expensively than you need to because so much waste is involved in servicing the myriad different commercial providers who have their fingers in the pie. And then when you get your own commercial healthcare, you pay extra for the very fact that someone has to ask you to name your insurance company and give them your insurance details. No one ever asks me my insurance details here - they already know them, because they're the same for everyone.

In fact, the only time I ever get asked anything that creates an administrative tick is when I get a prescription filled. I get asked whether I'm paying the nominal fee for a prescription (I can't even remember what it is - it's that trivial, just a few pounds), or whether I'm getting it free. What determines that difference is whether I am on any medication (not necessarily the one I'm getting the prescription filled for) that is vital to keeping me alive. If, for example, I need thyroxin to survive, I go on the free list for all prescription drugs, because the administrative costs of keeping track of every single individual prescription of that nature are just too much added weight, so it's easier and cheaper to just put someone like that on the free list.

And here's the thing: For millions of people in America, losing your job means losing your health insurance, and that's just when you are most likely to need it. People lose their jobs because they are ill, or become ill because they have been unemployed for a while, and that means that although you've been paying for years for expensive insurance, it will not be there when you need it. And that's just leaving aside the fact that it may also not be there when you need it even if you still "have" health insurance, because your provider spends millions of dollars to try to prevent you from getting them to fork over for your healthcare.

So it's pretty simple: You're already paying for healthcare. You deserve to get it.

Hard to add anything.